


Momento Mori

by paperchimes



Category: Pacific Rim, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/F, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 15:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16221911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperchimes/pseuds/paperchimes
Summary: To most, she was Lt Mori in uniform, prim and proper; a stony side-profile with blue highlighter hair. She was Ms Mori in the sunlight, a dream of flowing white linens and hands clasped around warm teacups. But to her, to only her, she was Mako in the moonlight; her ethereal outline a pilgrimage Liwen’s lips longed to revisit.





	Momento Mori

The air was thick with the scent of lilies and the heavy musk of rain.

Liwen’s heels grappled with the moist earth, her solemnly dressed figure adjusting her precarious footing over mud and grass. Her lips remained tightly pursed as she did, a concrete seal along her firmly clenched teeth. The anguish rotting in her ribcage was enough to kill a man and yet she drew in the courage to inhale a paced breath, barely controlling the quiver as she did. White sleeves on white knuckles remained interlocked behind her back, poised and steely conviction rooting her to the ground, and it was with this stace, she calmly faced the funeral march.

Though she was fully aware she was staring into the eye of a storm.

She held back a flinch. A distance away, upright men draped in suits bartered with gossip as ammunition, carefully wrapping their words with the convenient foliage of sympathy wreaths and white laces. Unbeknownst to them, Shao industries were well aware of their preplanned transgression. There was never any privacy when one was high enough in the corporate ladder.

And what of Mako?

Was she just another casualty to the greater Game? Another piece or wager being gambled with at the expense of integrity?

Liwen’s eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses as one of the businessmen stifled a laugh. She could taste their toxicity from miles away.

 _Typical,_ she thought acidly.

From her exterior, most who regarded the Shao Industries heir would find her power-suit and wide-brimmed hat intimidating amidst the soft outline of willow trees and marble headstones. Not even the ribbons from the funeral wreaths had an effect on the sharp edges of Ms Shao’s silhouette. She was adamant that her outside matched her insides: unforgiving, steely and dangerously serrated.

She was aware of the cameras zooming in on her. Liwen could smell the ozone and newspaper printers being warmed up. The tabloids were pre-written; all the press were waiting for were the photos. A moment’s weakness, laminated, A4.

Her empire was soaked in gasoline and all it took was for her face with the wrong expression to spark the world into predetermined discourse

She could see the headlines now: Shao Industries Boom After Death of War Hero.

Liwen couldn’t blame them. After all, she of all people knew how all this looked. From the corner of her eye, she spotted the glistening sheen of the lens focusing in on her. She gave her head a light tilt and her face was obscured by the brim of her hat

 _None of that now_.

Just five minutes ago, she had to re-apply her eyeliner for the seventh time that day.

 _Stay strong_. She had to stay strong. Liwen was caught in a tangle of political webs and on the other end of her puppet strings, the sharks were gripping her tight.

She could break down when she was safely in her own home.

“Secretary-General Mori will never be forgotten…” the steady drawl continued, _her name_ a stark red stain in the white noise - Shao smiled - like the symbol of a nation Mako once avenged. “A woman of virtue, intuition, **perseverance**. She was a beacon of light when the world had nothing but darkness.”

The soft glossy memories of Mako’s smile then began to dance in front of Liwen’s eyes. Uncharacteristic of herself, she allowed her mind to wander, catching hold of this Driftless pulse and following those hypnotic dark eyes and red lips down the RABBIT hole.

She remembered the giddy side-glances and chaste brushes as they walked past each other in the halls. She could feel the gentleness in how she had held her hand, the burn of it searing a Mako-shaped ghost into her heart.

To most, she was Lt Mori in uniform, prim and proper; a stony side-profile with blue highlighter hair. She was Ms Mori in the sunlight, a dream of flowing white linens and hands clasped around warm teacups. But to her, _to only her_ , she was Mako in the moonlight; her ethereal outline a pilgrimage Liwen’s lips longed to revisit.

And for as long as the world still spun, she would always belong to her. Liwen had only this promise to hold onto as she lucidly felt herself begin to crumble away.

* * *

_I wish there was a better way to say goodbye._

It was hours after they had laid Mako to rest and Liwen had spent most of it succumbing to instinct. Now back in the sanctuary of her home, she allowed herself a moment of weakness, feeling the stinging burn of hot tears running down her swollen cheeks.

The low hum of the air-conditioner was the only sound that occupied the space between Liwen and her heartbreak. In her stumbling and tripping across the leather upholstery of her lounge chairs, the Shao Industries CEO sought better comfort from the familiar icy burn of her windowpane against bare skin. With lack of better words, she could no longer care about how all this looked. Shamelessly, her clothes remained scattered across her penthouse, on previous occasions intermixed with those belonging to her Mako. But tonight, her discarded suit held an entirely different meaning as it lay limply on the floor.

It was almost strategic, the way she had tossed her clothes to all corners of her room, almost as if this ritual was one last attempt to summon her Mako back to her.

 _Oh how the mighty have fallen_ , she mused, stripped down to her laces and a bottle of whiskey cradled by her side. Out of her control, a shattered sob wrung its way from the base of her throat. Her eyebrows immediately knitted in disgust.

_What a pitiful sound._

Absentmindedly, Liwen wrapped a pale, manicured hand around the neck of her bottle, emptying out generous lashes of amber liquid into what was probably her tenth glass for the night.

 _Mako would surely disapprove,_ she mused as she regarded the glass for the briefest of moments before downing it in one gulp.

She could almost hear her voice as she said it.

* * *

_“You’ll ruin your liver.”_

Liwen raised a perplexed eyebrow, just managing to halt the momentum of her hand with a hairline between the glass and her ready lips.

It was another morning-after, she recalled, with the two of them a mess of bed linens and tousled hair, miraculously, not expected to step into the Shatterdome for at least another seven hours. Naturally, in Liwen’s definition, this served plenty justification for a drink. But from the disapproving looks her midnight lover was casting her way, Ms Mori seemed to have other thoughts of how one should spend a morning.

Knowing her, it was probably something mindful and present, like _meditation_. She almost shuddered at the idea. Liwen could find plenty of things to mull over given that the drink accompanying her self-reflection was mulled as well.

“I’m Chinese,” she snipped with the lightest of smirks. “I have no liver.”

Much to Mako’s disdain, the Shao then unceremoniously tipped the contents of her drink down her throat in one, practiced motion.

“You’re impossible,” the emotion rang clear a wind-chime in spring, and Liwen then realised that there may be something more to today than Mako’s distaste of her mildly hedonistic relationship with alcohol.

“ _Mako_.”

“It’s my brother again,” the confession took almost no time at all. “He’s found himself in trouble.”

_Well there was no arguing that._

“Ah, well… I shan’t hold you back.”

The sad thing was that Liwen could understand where Mako was coming from, which meant that she knew there was _absolutely nothing_ she could do the alleviate the situation. So what else could she do other than to pour herself another glass as Lt Mori pulled herself away from their mattress sanctuary. Soft, murmured frustrations then filled the gentle space between them as Mako began the tedious task of collecting all of her clothes from the floor and reassembling them on her being.

It was moments like these she found herself missing the most.

* * *

“Liwen,” her whisper drifted across the expanse of white linens and mascara stains like a silver lining flickering at the edge of a stormcloud. She felt the warmth returning to her fingertips as they were caressed back into her being, as if Mako was the Sun and her body, an empty shell of a universe who had not yet known life.

Maybe that was why she had left such an emptiness in Liwen’s soul when she disappeared that day.

After all, what else could a star do when it dies… than leave a black hole?

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please do drop me a kudos or comment!
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://paperchimes.tumblr.com/). Feel free to scream with me about this lovely jaeger-ship.
> 
> By the way, [here's the post to this story on tumblr](http://paperchimes.tumblr.com/post/178820830893/momento-mori-by-paperchimes-to-most-she-was-lt) if you'd like to give it a like and / or reblog.
> 
> Hope each and every one of you has a great week!


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